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Why Big Food Is Feasting on ‘Natural’ Startups

Fortune writer Beth Kowitt reports on the packaged-food industry’s response to an existential crisis: Shoppers are seeking alternatives they deem healthier and more authentic than legacy brands.

In addition to selling fruit and veggie drinks, Bolthouse grows and packages fresh carrots—an old-fashioned, weather-sensitive farming business that Morrison suspected would be a turnoff for any packaged-goods company, including her own. True enough, Morrison’s board was skeptical at first. “Carrots, Denise? Really?” asked one director. But in the end, the numbers sold themselves. The so-called packaged-fresh sector, where Bolthouse was a standout, was already an $18.6 billion business—and one with promising growth.

Campbell paid $1.56 billion for the company in 2012. Today it has roughly half that amount (more than $800 million) in sales. The following year Morrison bought baby-food maker Plum Organics for $249 million. (It has over $90 million in sales.) Both of these new businesses are small in…